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Development Of Darwin's Theory
Following the inception of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection in 1838, the development of Darwin's theory to explain the "mystery of mysteries" of how new species originated was his "prime hobby" in the background to his main occupation of publishing the scientific results of the ''Beagle'' voyage. He was settling into married life, but suffered from bouts of illness and after his first child was born the family moved to rural Down House as a family home away from the pressures of London. The publication in 1839 of his ''Journal and Remarks'' (now known as ''The Voyage of the Beagle'') brought him success as an author, and in 1842 he published his first major scientific book, '' The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs'', setting out his theory of the formation of coral atolls. He wrote out a sketch setting out his basic ideas on transmutation of species, which he expanded into an "essay" in 1844, and discussed his theory with friends as well as continuing with e ...
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Inception Of Darwin's Theory
The inception of Darwin's theory occurred during an intensively busy period which began when Charles Darwin returned from the survey voyage of the ''Beagle'', with his reputation as a fossil collector and geologist already established. He was given an allowance from his father to become a gentleman naturalist rather than a clergyman, and his first tasks were to find suitable experts to describe his collections, write out his '' Journal and Remarks'', and present papers on his findings to the Geological Society of London. At Darwin's geological début, the anatomist Richard Owen's reports on the fossils showed that extinct species were related to current species in the same locality, and the ornithologist John Gould showed that bird specimens from the Galápagos Islands were of distinct species related to places, not just varieties. These points convinced Darwin that transmutation of species must be occurring, and in his ''Red Notebook'' he jotted down his first evolutionary ideas ...
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Transmutation Of Species
Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory, and other 18th and 19th century proponents of pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas included Denis Diderot, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, Robert Grant, and Robert Chambers, the anonymous author of the book ''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation''. Opposition in the scientific community to these early theories of evolution, led by influential scientists like the anatomists Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen, and the geologist Charles Lyell, was intense. The debate over them was an important stage in the history of evolutionary thought and influenced the subsequent reaction to Darwin's theory. Terminology Transmutation was one of the names commonly used for evolutionary ...
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Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Shrowsbury' or 'Shroosbury', the correct pronunciation being a matter of longstanding debate. The town centre has a largely unspoilt medieval street plan and over 660 listed buildings, including several examples of timber framing from the 15th and 16th centuries. Shrewsbury Castle, a red sandstone fortification, and Shrewsbury Abbey, a former Benedictine monastery, were founded in 1074 and 1083 respectively by the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, Roger de Montgomery. The town is the birthplace of Charles Darwin and is where he spent 27 years of his life. east of the Welsh border, Shrewsbury serves as the commercial centre for Shropshire and mid-Wales, with a retail output of over £299 million per year and light industry and distribution centre ...
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Maer Hall
file:Maer Hall - geograph.org.uk - 207996.jpg, upright=1.35, Maer Hall Maer Hall is a large Grade II listed 17th-century country house in Maer, Staffordshire. The large stone-built country house and estate of Maer Hall dominates the village of Maer. Its location in the district of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, is attractively rural, but fairly close to the pottery manufacturing area around Stoke-on-Trent which attracted its most famous owner Josiah Wedgwood II. His nephew Charles Darwin often visited Maer, and married Josiah's daughter Emma Darwin, Emma. A manor house at Maer dates back to 1282, the owner then being William de Mere. The present stone house was built around 1680 on a slope above a small lake, or "Mere (lake), mere", which gave the house its name. In the 18th century the landscape designer Capability Brown altered the lake in a scheme of pleasure grounds. The house could be approached from either the north entrance with its grade II listed lodge, or f ...
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Zoology Of The Voyage Of H
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. The term is derived from Ancient Greek , ('animal'), and , ('knowledge', 'study'). Although humans have always been interested in the natural history of the animals they saw around them, and made use of this knowledge to domesticate certain species, the formal study of zoology can be said to have originated with Aristotle. He viewed animals as living organisms, studied their structure and development, and considered their adaptations to their surroundings and the function of their parts. The Greek physician Galen studied human anatomy and was one of the greatest surgeons of the ancient world, but after the fall of the Western Roman Em ...
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Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known as the author of ''Principles of Geology'' (1830–33), which presented to a wide public audience the idea that the earth was shaped by the same natural processes still in operation today, operating at similar intensities. The philosopher William Whewell termed this gradualistic view "uniformitarianism" and contrasted it with catastrophism, which had been championed by Georges Cuvier and was better accepted in Europe. The combination of evidence and eloquence in ''Principles'' convinced a wide range of readers of the significance of " deep time" for understanding the earth and environment. Lyell's scientific contributions included a pioneering explanation of climate change, in which shifting boundaries between oceans and continents could be used to explain long-term variati ...
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Hensleigh Wedgwood
Hensleigh Wedgwood (21 January 1803 – 2 June 1891) was a British etymologist, philologist and barrister, author of ''A Dictionary of English Etymology''. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin, whom his sister Emma Darwin, Emma married in 1839. Early life Wedgwood was born at Tarrant Gunville in Dorset, the fourth son of Josiah Wedgwood II and Elizabeth Allen of Cresselly, Pembrokeshire. He was educated at Rugby School, then entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1820 but switched to Christ's College, Cambridge, Christ's College the following year. Though he did well in maths, graduating as 8th wrangler (University of Cambridge), wrangler, he finished bottom in the classics, classical tripos at Cambridge in 1824, for which he was awarded the first "wooden wedge", equivalent to the wooden spoon (award), wooden spoon, and jokingly named for him. Career After leaving Cambridge, Wedgwood read for the Court of Chancery, chancery bar. In 1828, he qualified as a barrister, but never pract ...
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Alphonse Pyrame De Candolle
Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus (or Pyrame) de Candolle (28 October 18064 April 1893) was a French-Swiss botanist, the son of the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. Biography De Candolle, son of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, first devoted himself to the study of law, but gradually drifted to botany and finally succeeded to his father's chair at the University of Geneva. He published a number of botanical works, including continuations of the ''Prodromus'' in collaboration with his son, Casimir de Candolle. Among his other contributions is the formulation, based on his father's work for the ''Prodromus'', of the first Laws of Botanical Nomenclature, which was adopted by the International Botanical Congress in 1867, and was the prototype of the current ICN. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1859 and was awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London in 1889. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Acad ...
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Animal Husbandry
Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starting with the Neolithic Revolution when animals were first domesticated, from around 13,000 BC onwards, predating farming of the first crops. By the time of early civilisations such as ancient Egypt, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were being raised on farms. Major changes took place in the Columbian exchange, when Old World livestock were brought to the New World, and then in the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, when livestock breeds like the Dishley Longhorn cattle and Lincoln Longwool sheep were rapidly improved by agriculturalists, such as Robert Bakewell, to yield more meat, milk, and wool. A wide range of other species, such as horse, water buffalo, llama, rabbit, and guinea pig, are used as livestock in some ...
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Emma Darwin
Emma Darwin (; 2 May 1808 – 2 October 1896) was an English woman who was the wife and first cousin of Charles Darwin. They were married on 29 January 1839 and were the parents of ten children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Early life Emma Wedgwood was born at the family estate of Maer Hall in Maer, Staffordshire, the youngest of seven children of Josiah Wedgwood II and his wife Elizabeth "Bessie" (née Allen). Her grandfather Josiah Wedgwood had made his fortune in pottery, and like many others who were not part of the aristocracy, they were nonconformist, belonging to the Unitarian church. Charles Darwin was her first cousin; their shared grandparents were Josiah and Sarah Wedgwood, and as the Wedgwood and Darwin families were closely allied, they had been acquainted since childhood. She was close to her sister Fanny, the two being known by the family as the "Doveleys", and was charming and messy, accounting for her nickname, "Little Miss Slip-Slop". She helped ...
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Robert Edmund Grant
Robert Edmond Grant MD FRCPEd FRS FRSE FZS FGS (11 November 1793 – 23 August 1874) was a British anatomist and zoologist. Life Grant was born at Argyll Square in Edinburgh (demolished to create Chambers Street), the son of Alexander Grant WS, and his wife, Jane Edmond. He was educated at the High School in Edinburgh then studied Medicine at Edinburgh University. Having obtained his MD at Edinburgh in 1814, Grant gave up medical practice in favour of marine biology and the zoology of invertebrates, living on a legacy from his father. As a materialist and freethinker, and politically radical, he was open to ideas in biology that were considered subversive in the climate of opinion prevailing in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars. He cited Erasmus Darwin's '' Zoönomia'' in his doctoral dissertation, a work which introduced the idea of evolution in poetical form. In 1824 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh his proposer being Dr John Barclay. He became ...
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Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Owen produced a vast array of scientific work, but is probably best remembered today for coining the word '' Dinosauria'' (meaning "Terrible Reptile" or "Fearfully Great Reptile"). An outspoken critic of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Owen agreed with Darwin that evolution occurred, but thought it was more complex than outlined in Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species''. Owen's approach to evolution can be considered to have anticipated the issues that have gained greater attention with the recent emergence of evolutionary developmental biology. Owen was the first president of the Microscopical Society of London in 1839 and edited many issues of its journal – then known as ''The Microscopic Journal''. Owen also c ...
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